News Release

Edwin Bender, 406-449-24802003-12-17
HELENA, Mont. -- Democratic and Republican state political party committees raised $1 billion of soft money over a four-year period covering the 2000 and 2002 election cycles, with Florida leading all states by a wide margin, a new, 50-state study shows.

In Florida -- where the 2000 presidential race erupted in controversy and 2002 held a gubernatorial re-election contest featuring President Bush's brother -- the two main state committees raised $153 million over four years. They far outpaced California party committees, which ranked second at $79.4 million, the study by the Institute on Money in State Politics showed.

Slightly less than half of the money came from the six national party committees, which can no longer raise the soft money they gave their state counterparts in such abundance.

"Last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling leaves big-money donors looking for new places to give their soft money and state party committees looking for ways to replace the millions of dollars they received from the national parties," noted Edwin Bender, executive director of the Institute. "It's quite likely these two groups will meet up in the future, and many donors will be funneling their money directly to the states -- where it will be harder to track through 50 different sets of laws and state disclosure agencies."

The Institute is a national nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that collects and analyzes campaign contribution reports for state-level candidates and party committees. Its database of information is available on the Web at www.followthemoney.org.

"Our study of past giving to party committees will provide a baseline for measuring how changes in federal campaign-finance laws will affect giving to state party committees in the future," Bender said.

The Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act, upheld last week by the U.S. Supreme Court, banned soft-money contributions to national party committees and placed other restrictions on the use of soft money.

The Institute's study, supported by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts, found that national political party committees contributed 44 percent of the soft money that went to state party committees in the 2000 and 2002 election cycles -- $255 million in 2000 and $217 million in 2002.

"Already, those committees have lost $46 million in funds they had received from the national committees by this same point in the 2000 presidential cycle, a cycle comparable to the current election cycle," Bender noted. "What remains to be seen is whether this money now flows to the state party committees through other sources or whether it simply disappears from the political system. But past experience tells us that political money usually finds its way around obstacles."

Should money once contributed at the national level find its way to the state party committees, tracking the funds will become more difficult, Bender said, explaining that 50 different state laws and state agencies would be regulating contributions that once were governed by one federal law and reported to one federal agency.

The study also found that:

-- The five top-contributing industries remained the same in each election cycle: lawyers and lobbyists, real estate interests, public sector unions, general trade unions, and securities and investment interests. Giving by these five industries totaled $128.2 million during the study period.

-- Contributions from individuals represented only 14 percent of the total giving in 2000 and 16 percent in 2002. But the top 25 individual contributors in each of the election cycles gave 15 percent of the $160.7 million given by individuals.

-- Three individuals gave more than $1 million to state party committees in the 2000 election cycle: Silicon Valley executive Steven Kirsch of California, S. Daniel Abraham of Slim Fast Foods in Florida, and computer hardware developer Bernard Daines of Washington state. Kirsch gave $2.15 million to Democratic committees in 10 states, Abraham gave $1.3 million to Democratic committees in 19 states, and Daines gave nearly $1.2 million to Republican committees in five states.

-- Only one contributor gave more than $1 million in 2002: James Pederson, a real-estate developer and chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party. He gave $3.7 million, with all but $1,000 going to the Arizona Democratic Party.

-- State party committees also sent money to committees in other states, sometimes in exchange for hard money that could be spent directly on federal election activities and candidates. The state committees gave more than $6 million to their counterparts elsewhere over the study period.